Northern Lights, known as
The Golden Compass in North America, is
the first novel in English
novelist Philip
Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.
Published in 1995, the fantasy novel is
set in a universe parallel to our own and tells of Lyra Belacqua's
journey north in search of her missing friend, Roger Parslow, and
her imprisoned father/uncle, Lord Asriel, who has been conducting
experiments with a mysterious substance known as Dust. Winner of the Carnegie Medal in 1996, the novel has been
adapted into a Hollywood feature film, released in 2007 as
The Golden Compass along with
an accompanying video game. Both the
trilogy and the film adaptation have faced controversy, as some
critics assert that the story presents a negative portrayal of
organized religion and religion in general.

Contents

Title

For some time during the pre-publication process, the series of
novels was known as The Golden Compasses. The word
Compasses referred to a pair of
compasses—the circle-drawing instrument—rather than a navigational compass. Pullman
then settled on Northern Lights as the title for the first
book, and continued to refer to the trilogy as The Golden
Compasses. Like the eventual title for the trilogy, the
original title The Golden Compasses comes from a line in
Milton'sParadise
Lost.[1]

In the United
States, in their discussions over the publication of the first
book, the publishers Alfred A. Knopf had been calling it
The Golden Compass (omitting the plural), which they
mistakenly believed referred to Lyra's alethiometer, because
the device superficially resembles a navigational compass.
Meanwhile, in the UK, Pullman had replaced The Golden
Compasses with His Dark Materials (a title that
Pullman had taken from a line in Paradise Lost) as the title of the
trilogy. According to Pullman, the publishers had become so
attached to The Golden Compass that they insisted on
publishing the U.S. edition of the first book under that title,
rather than Northern Lights with the title used in the UK
and Australia.[1]

Plot
summary

The story starts when Lyra Belacqua— a supposedly orphaned 11
year old girl residing at Jordan College, Oxford—secretly enters and hides in the
forbidden 'Retiring Room' in the college, despite resistance from
her dæmon, Pantalaimon — an
animal-formed, shape-shifting manifestation of her soul. Hidden
behind an armchair, Lyra and "Pan" see the Master of the college
putting poison into wine intended for the visiting Lord Asriel, Lyra's
uncle, in an attempt to assassinate him. Lord Asriel later enters
after the Master of the college has left and Lyra, having by now
hidden in a wardrobe, bursts out and immediately warns him that the
wine is poisoned. Rather than punishing her for being where she
should not, he allows her to stay hidden if she will spy on the
other attendees at his upcoming meeting. When the meeting
commences, Lord Asriel shows the resident scholars and the master
pictures of the Aurora Borealis (the 'Northern
Lights' of the title) and the mysterious elementary particles
called Dust. Shortly after, Lord
Asriel travels to the Arctic North, and Lyra continues her studies
at the college.

After the meeting, the master and the librarian discuss Lord
Asriel's journey to the north and allude to another invisible and
untouchable world.

When “the Gobblers,” who have become a recent urban legend, kidnap
her friend Roger, a kitchen boy from the college, Lyra
vows to rescue him. But instead an important visitor, a woman named
Mrs. Marisa
Coulter (who has already been revealed to the reader to be
leading the Gobblers), offers to take Lyra away from Jordan College
to become her apprentice. Lyra assents, but before she
leaves, the Master of the college entrusts to her (with the
condition that she keep it absolutely secret) a priceless object
previously given to the College by Lord Asriel: an alethiometer. Resembling a golden,
many-handed pocket-watch, it can answer any question asked by a
skilled user. Although presently unable to read or understand its
complex symbols, Lyra takes it with her to Mrs. Coulter's flat.
Soon after, Lyra becomes suspicious of Mrs. Coulter's motives when
her dæmon searches Lyra's room for the alethiometer.

At a cocktail party hosted by Mrs. Coulter, Lyra discovers by
eavesdropping that Mrs. Coulter heads an organization known as the
"General Oblation Board"
and that this board is in fact, the "Gobblers" who have been
kidnapping children. Horrified, Lyra flees Mrs. Coulter's flat
during the party.

While escaping from the "Gobblers," Lyra is rescued by the Gyptians (nomadic,
canal-boat-dwelling people) who afterwards reveal that Lord Asriel
and Mrs. Coulter are Lyra's father and mother. She also learns that
many children like Roger have been disappearing from among the
Gyptians, and that the Gyptians are planning an expedition to the
north to rescue them. During her time with the Gyptians, Lyra
intuitively begins to learn how to operate the alethiometer.

On a stop in Trollesund, Lyra meets
a sapientarmoured bear
called Iorek
Byrnison. Iorek is an exiled bear prince who is paid for his
work in spirits, a considerably dishonorable job for a panserbjørne.
However, the villagers had taken his armour, which is comparable to
a dæmon for him, binding him to his work. Lyra uses her
alethiometer to aid Iorek in reclaiming his armour, thereby
enlisting his aid.

After departure from Trollesund, the Gyptians and Lyra continue
north to the destination of Bolvangar, where they
believe the Gobblers are keeping the children. On the way, Lyra
stops at a village in response to her alethiometer readings,
looking for a child. She finds a boy, Tony Makarios, who had been
separated from his dæmon, Ratters. Lyra then realizes that
"intercision" carried out by the Gobblers is actually a process
that severs the tie that binds children to their dæmons,
effectively removing their soul. Tony dies within the day, and the
group continues on after burning the body.

Soon after, Lyra is captured by a party of hunters who take her
to an experimentation facility in Bolvangar, where she discovers
that the children are being subjected to experimental intercision.
Inside, she locates Roger and devises an escape plan. She is caught
spying on Ms. Coulter and a group of workers at the facility, and
narrowly escapes suffering the intercision process herself; she is
rescued, unfortunately, by Mrs. Coulter, who tries to take the
alethiometer. Lyra escapes the clutches of Ms. Coulter once again.
Lyra leads the other children from the facility and is rescued by
Lee
Scoresby in his hydrogenballoon. Iorek Byrnison and a clan
of witches friendly with the Gyptians also aid in rescuing the
children by fighting the guards of Bolvangar.

Having found Roger, Lyra now is determined to deliver the
alethiometer to Lord Asriel, believing that he needs it for his
purposes. He is imprisoned at Svalbard, the armoured bears' fortress,
because the church opposes his experiments on Dust. As they travel
to Svalbard, bat-like cliff ghasts
attack the balloon; Lyra is thrown out but lands safely, only to be
captured by the armoured bears. She tricks the usurping bear-king,
Iofur
Raknison, into fighting Iorek Byrnison, who regains his throne.
Thereafter, she travels to Lord Asriel’s cabin, accompanied by
Iorek and Roger.

Despite being imprisoned, Lord Asriel has become so influential
that he has accumulated the necessary equipment to continue his
experiments on Dust. After explaining to Lyra the nature of Dust,
an emanation from another world, and the existence of parallel
universes, he departs, taking Roger and much scientific equipment.
Lyra pursues them, having discovered that she has indeed brought
her father what he wanted, though not in the way she thought. It
was not the alethiometer he needed, but Roger: the severing of the
child-dæmon tie releases an enormous amount of energy, which Lord
Asriel needs to complete his task. Roger dies when Lord Asriel
separates him from his dæmon, and with the enormous energy released
-- combined with his specialized equipment -- Lord Asriel is able
to tear a hole through the sky into a parallel world. Lord Asriel
offers to bring Ms. Coulter, who had come by means of her zeppelin, with him, but she
declines. Lord Asriel walks through into the new world alone. On
Pantalaimon's advice, Lyra follows. This concludes the first novel,
with the trilogy continuing in the next book, The Subtle
Knife.

A video game of the movie adaptation of the book, titled The
Golden Compass, published by Sega and developed by Shiny
Entertainment, was released December 4, 2007. Players assume
the role of Lyra as she travels through the frozen wastes of the
North in an attempt to rescue her friend kidnapped by a mysterious
organization known as the Gobblers. Travelling with her are an
armoured polar bear and her dæmon Pantalaimon (Pan). Together, they
must use a truth-telling alethiometer and other items to explore
the land and fight their way through confrontations in order to
help Lyra's friend. The Golden Compass features a mix of
fighting and puzzle solving with three characters. [2]

Audio
books

It was also adaptated unabridged & released by BBC
Audiobooks. It is narrated by the author, Philip Pullman, with a
full cast, including Joanna Wyatt as Lyra, Alison Dowling as Mrs
Coulter, Sean
Barrett as Lord Asriel and Iorek Byrnison and Stephen Thorne as
the Master and Farder Coram.

Religious
perspective

Some critics have asserted that the trilogy as well as the movie
adaptation present a negative portrayal of the Church and
religion,[3][4] while
others have argued that Pullman's works should be included in
religious education courses.[5] Peter
Hitchens views the His Dark Materials series as a direct
rebuttal of C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia
series.[6]
Literary critic Alan Jacobs (of Wheaton College) argues that
in his recasting of Lewis'
Narnia series, Pullman replaces a theist world-view with a Rousseauist one.[7]

From Wikiquote

I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do,
not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed,
because it helps someone, or that's an evil one, because it hurts
them. People are too complicated to have simple labels.

Sourced

We are all stupid, and we are all intelligent. The line dividing
the stupid from the intelligent goes right down the middle of our
heads.

I have said that His Dark Materials is not
fantasy but stark realism, and my reason for this is to emphasise
what I think is an important aspect of the story, namely the fact
that it is realistic, in psychological terms. I deal with
matters that might normally be encountered in works of realism,
such as adolescence, sexuality, and so on; and they are the main
subject matter of the story — the fantasy (which, of course, is
there: no-one but a fool would think I meant there is no fantasy in
the books at all) is there to support and embody them, not for its
own sake.

Others may find their readership on the stupid side: I don't. I pay
my readers the compliment of assuming that they are intellectually
adventurous.

I'm trying to write a book about what it means to be
human, to grow up, to suffer and learn. My quarrel with
much (not all) fantasy is it has this marvellous toolbox and does
nothing with it except construct shoot-em-up games. Why shouldn't a
work of fantasy be as truthful and profound about becoming an adult
human being as the work of George Eliot or Jane Austen? Well, there are a few
fantasies that are. One of them is Paradise Lost.

Interview at Achuka Children's Books

I knew I was telling a story that would be gripping
enough to take readers with it, and I have a high enough opinion of
my readers to expect them to take a little difficulty in their
stride. My readers are intelligent: I don't write for
stupid people. Now mark this carefully, because otherwise I shall
be misquoted and vilified again — we are all stupid, and we
are all intelligent. The line dividing the stupid from the
intelligent goes right down the middle of our heads.
Others may find their readership on the stupid side: I don't. I pay
my readers the compliment of assuming that they are intellectually
adventurous.

Interview at Achuka Children's Books

On an unseasonably, uncomfortably, unnaturally warm day in
mid-October I sit here trying not to think about global warming.
But it's difficult. Is this fear going to pass away like the other
fears I remember — nuclear war, overpopulation leading to mass
starvation, the hole in the ozone layer, acid rain? Well, those
problems haven't gone away exactly. The new one just seems bigger
than all the rest.

All these in their pregnant causes mixed
Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless the almighty maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more worlds... ~ John Milton

The title of this trilogy is derived from lines in
Paradise
Lost by John
Milton, which are used in the front piece of Northern
Lights:

Into this wild abyss,
The womb of nature and perhaps her grave,
Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,
But all these in their pregnant causes mixed
Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless the almighty maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more worlds,
Into this wild abyss the wary fiend
Stood on the brink of hell and looked a while,
Pondering his voyage...

Lyra has a part to play in all this, and a major one. The irony is
that she must do it all without realizing what she's doing...

Lyra and her dæmon moved through the darkening hall,
taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the
kitchen.

First line, introducing Lyra Belacqua (also known
as Lyra Silvertongue), in Ch. 1 : The Decanter of Tokay

Her dæmon's name was Pantalaimon, and he was currently in the
form of a moth, a dark brown one so as not to show up in the
darkness of the hall.

Introducing Pantalaimon, also called Pan, in Ch. 1 : The
Decanter of Tokay

How can I just go and sit in the library or somewhere
and twiddle my thumbs, knowing what's going to happen? I don't
intend to do that, I promise you.

Lyra, in Ch. 1 : The Decanter of Tokay

"That light," said the Chaplain, "is it going up or coming
down?"
"It's coming down," said Lord Asriel, "but it isn't light.
It's Dust."
Something in the way he said it made Lyra imagine dust with a
capital letter, as if this wasn't ordinary dust. The reaction of
the Scholars confirmed her feeling, because Lord Asriel's words
caused a sudden collective silence, followed by gasps of
incredulity.

Ch. 1 : The Decanter of Tokay

As I understand it, the Holy Church teaches that there are two
worlds: the world of everything we can see and hear and touch, and
another world, the spiritual world of heaven and hell. Barnard and
Stokes were two — how shall I put it — renegade theologians who
postulated the existence of numerous other worlds like this one,
neither heaven nor hell, but material and sinful. They are there,
close by, but invisible and unreachable.

The Master of Jordan College
to the Librarian, in Ch. 2 : The Idea of North

Lyra has a part to play in all this, and a major one. The irony
is that she must do it all without realizing what she's doing. She
can be helped, though, and if my plan with the Tokay had succeeded,
she would have been safe for a little longer. I would have liked to
spare her a journey to the North.

The Master to the Librarian, in Ch. 2 : The Idea of
North

It tells you the truth. As for how to read it, you'll have to learn
by yourself...

"Lyra, I'm going to give you something, and you must promise to
keep it private. Will you swear to that?"
"Yes," Lyra said.
He crossed to the desk and took from a drawer a small package
wrapped in black velvet. When he unfolded the cloth, Lyra saw
something like a large watch or a small clock: a thick disk of gold
and crystal. It might have been a compass or something of the
sort.
"What is it?" she said.
"It's an alethiometer. It's one of only six that were ever
made. Lyra, I urge you again: keep it private. It would be
better if Mrs. Coulter didn't know about it.
Your uncle — "
"But what does it do?"
"It tells you the truth. As for how to read it, you'll have
to learn by yourself. Now go — it's getting lighter —
hurry back to your room before anyone sees you."

The Master and Lyra, in Ch. 4 : The Alethiometer

It lay heavily in her hands, the crystal face gleaming, the
golden body exquisitely machined. It was very like a clock, or a
compass, for there were hands pointing to places around the dial,
but instead of the hours or the points of the compass there were
several little pictures, each of them painted with extraordinary
precision, as if on ivory with the finest and slenderest sable
brush. She turned the dial around to look at them all. There was an
anchor; an hourglass surmounted by a skull; a chameleon, a bull, a
beehive... Thirty-six altogether, and she couldn't even guess what
they meant.

Lyra, investigating the alethiometer, in Ch. 4 : The
Alethiometer

"But suppose your dæmon settles in a shape you don't
like?"
"Well, then, you're discontented, en't you? There's plenty of fold
as'd like to have a lion as a dæmon and they end up with a poodle.
And till they learn to be satisfied with what they are, they're
going to be fretful about it. Waste of feeling, that is."

They know that something is happening. And they suspect it
has to do with other worlds...

Do not lie to the Scholar.

The alethiometer to Lyra, in Ch. 4 : Trepanning

Dark matter is what my research team is looking for. No one knows
what it is. There's more stuff out there in the universe than we
can see, that's the point...

She soon found the door the alethiometer had told her about.
The sign on it said DARK MATTER RESEARCH UNIT, and under it
someone had scribbled R.I.P. Another hand had added in pencil
DIRECTOR: LAZARUS.
Lyra made nothing of that. She knocked, and a woman's voice said,
"Come in.

Ch. 4 : Trepanning

Lyra sighed; she had forgotten how roundabout Scholars could
be. It was difficult to tell them the truth when a lie
would have been so much easier for them to understand.

Ch. 4 : Trepanning

I'm perfectly well aware that you've found a doorway
somewhere...

Dark matter is what my research team is looking for. No one
knows what it is. There's more stuff out there in the universe than
we can see, that's the point. We can see the stars and the galaxies
and the things that shine, but for it all to hang together and not
fly apart, there needs to be a lot more of it — to make gravity
work, you see. But no one can detect it. So there are lots of
different research projects trying to find out what it is, and this
is one of them. ... We think it's some kind of elementary particle.
Something quite different from anything discovered so far. But the
particles are very hard to detect.

It was all very well, the alethiometer telling her to
be truthful, but she knew what would happen if she told the whole
truth. She had to tread carefully and just avoid direct
lies.

Ch. 4 : Trepanning

The man who made that doorway has got a knife. He's hiding in that
other world right now, and he's extremely afraid. He has reason to
be. If he's where I think he is, he's in an old stone tower with
angels carved around the doorway...

I'm perfectly well aware that you've found a doorway
somewhere. I guess it's not too far from Summertown, where
I dropped Lizzie, or Lyra, this morning. And that through the
doorway is another world, one with no grownups in it. Right so far?
Well, you see, the man who made that doorway has got a knife. He's
hiding in that other world right now, and he's extremely afraid. He
has reason to be. If he's where I think he is, he's in an old stone
tower with angels carved around the doorway. The Torre degli
Angeli.

Sir Charles to Lyra and Will, in Ch. 7 : The
Rolls-Royce

Who is this man who's got the knife?

Will, in Ch. 8 : The Tower of the Angels

I hold the subtle knife on behalf of the
Guild.

Giacomo Paradisi in Ch. 8 : The Tower of the Angels

He'd learned that the object of a school fight was not to gain
points for style but to force your enemy to give in, which meant
hurting him more than he was hurting you. He knew that you had to
be willing to hurt someone else, too, and he'd found out that not
many people were, when it came to it; but he knew that he
was.
So this wasn't unfamiliar to him, but he hadn't fought against a
nearly grown man armed with a knife before, and at all costs he
must keep the man from picking it up now that he'd dropped it.

Ch. 8 : The Tower of the Angels

Will darted back to the gutter, and picked up the
knife, and the fight was over. The young man, cut and
battered, clambered up the step, and saw Will standing above him
holding the knife; he stared with a sickly anger and then turned
and fled.

Ch. 8 : The Tower of the Angels

"Now," said Giacomo Paradisi, "here you are, take the
knife, it is yours."
"I don't want it," said Will. "I don't want anything to do with
it."
"You haven't got the choice," said the old man. "You are
the bearer now."
"I thought you said you was," said Lyra.
"My time is over," he said. "The knife knows when to leave
one hand and settle in another, and I know how to tell..."

Ch. 8 : The Tower of the Angels

What Asriel's done has shaken everything up, Mr. Scoresby, shaken
it more profoundly than it's ever been shaken before. These
doorways and windows that I spoke of — they open in unexpected
places now.

"This edge," said Giacomo Paradisi, touching the steel
with the handle of a spoon, "will cut through any material in the
world. Look."
And he pressed the silver spoon against the blade. Will, holding
the knife, felt only the slightest resistance as the tip of the
spoon's handle fell to the table, cut clean off."The other edge," the old man went on, "is more subtle
still. With it you can cut an opening out of this world altogether.
Try it now. Do as I say — you are the bearer. You have to know. No
one can teach you but me, and I have not much time left. Stand up
and listen."

Ch. 8 : The Tower of the Angels

The security services are alarmed. Every nation that does
research into fundamental physics — what we call experimental
theology — is turning to its scientists urgently to discover what's
going on. Because they know that something is happening.
And they suspect it has to do with other worlds.

Sir Charles to Mrs. Coulter in Ch. 9 : Theft

The Master of Jordan College is a foolish old man. Why he gave
it to her I can't imagine; you need several years of intensive
study to make any sense of it at all.

Mrs. Coulter, on Lyra having the alethiometer, in Ch. 9 :
Theft

What Asriel's done has shaken everything up, Mr.
Scoresby, shaken it more profoundly than it's ever been shaken
before. These doorways and windows that I spoke of — they
open in unexpected places now. It's hard to navigate, but this wind
is a fair one.

Stanislaus Grumman, to Lee Scoresby in Ch. 14 : Alamo
Gulch

Both the Oblation Board and the Specters of Indifference are
bewitched by this truth about human beings: that innocence is
different from experience. The Oblation Board fears and hates Dust,
and the Specters feast on it, but it's Dust both of them are
obsessed by.

Stanislaus Grumman, to Lee Scoresby in Ch. 14 : Alamo
Gulch

Seems to me the place you fight cruelty is where you
find it, and the place you give help is where you see it
needed.

Lee Scoresby to Stanislaus Grumman in Ch. 14 : Alamo
Gulch

On, said the alethiometer. Farther, higher.
So on they climbed.

"You have a strange way about you, Dr. Grumman. You ever spend
any time among the witches?"
"Yes," said Grumman. "And among academicians, and among spirits.
I found folly everywhere, but there were grains of wisdom
in every stream of it. No doubt there was much more wisdom that I
failed to recognize. Life is hard, Mr. Scoresby, but we
cling to it all the same."
"And this journey we're on? Is that folly or wisdom?"
"The greatest wisdom I know."
"Tell me again what your purpose is. You're going to find the
bearer of this subtle knife, and what then?"
"Tell him what his task is."
"And that's a task that includes protecting Lyra," the aeronaut
reminded him.
"It will protect all of us."

Lee Scoresby and Stanislaus Grumman in Ch. 14 : Alamo
Gulch

On, said the alethiometer. Farther,
higher.
So on they climbed.

Ch. 15 : Bloodmoss

Will moved on grimly, screwing up his eyes against the glare,
ignoring the worsening pain from his hand, and finally reaching a
state in which movement alone was good and stillness bad, so that
he suffered more from resting than from toiling on. And since the
failure of the witches' spell to stop his bleeding, he thought they
were regarding him with fear, too, as if he was marked by some
curse greater than their own powers.

Ch. 15 : Bloodmoss

Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over
ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and
stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and
submit.

If you're the bearer of the knife, you have a task
that's greater than you can imagine. A child ...
How could they let it happen? Well, so it must be. ...
There is a war coming, boy. The greatest war there ever
was. Something like it happened before, and this time the right
side must win. We've had nothing but lies and propaganda and
cruelty and deceit for all the thousands of years of human history.
It's time we started again, but properly this time.
..."
He stopped to take in several rattling breaths.
"The knife," he went on after a minute. "They never knew
what they were making, those old philosophers. They invented a
device that could split open the very smallest particles of matter,
and they used it to steal candy. They had no idea that they'd made
the one weapon in all the universes that could defeat the
tyrant.The
Authority. God. The rebel angels fell because they didn't have
anything like the knife; but now ..."
"I didn't want it! I don't want it now!" Will cried. "If you want
it, you can have it! I hate it, and I hate what it does — "
"Too late. You haven't any choice: you're the bearer. It's
picked you out. And, what's more, they know you've got it; and if
you don't use it against them, they'll tear it from your hands and
use it against the rest of us, forever and ever."

Ch. 15 : Bloodmoss

"You fought for the knife?"
"Yes, but — "
"Then you're a warrior. That's what you are. Argue with
anything else, but don't argue with your own
nature."
Will knew that the man was speaking the truth. But it wasn't a
welcome truth. It was heavy and painful. The man seemed to know
that, because he let Will bow his head before he spoke again.
"There are two great powers," the man said, "and they've been
fighting since time began. Every advance in human life, every scrap
of knowledge and wisdom and decency we have has been torn by one
side from the teeth of the other. Every little increase in
human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who
want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want
us to obey and be humble and submit."
"And now those two powers are lining up for battle. And each of
them wants that knife of yours more than anything else. You have to
choose, boy. We've been guided here, both of us — you with the
knife, and me to tell you about it."

Ch. 15 : Bloodmoss

She felt a nausea of the soul, a hideous and sickening
despair, a melancholy weariness so profound that she was going to
die of it. Her last conscious thought was disgust at life;
her senses had lied to her. The world was not made of energy and
delight but of foulness, betrayal, and lassitude. Living was
hateful, and death was no better, and from end to end of the
universe this was the first and last and only truth.
Thus she stood, bow in hand, indifferent, dead in life.

Dying thoughts of Lena Feldt as a Specter "eats the life out of
her", Ch. 15 : Blood moss

We have to build the Republic of Heaven
where we are, because for us there is no elsewhere.

Your dæmon can only live its full life in the world it
was born in. Elsewhere it will eventually sicken and die.
We can travel, if there are openings into other worlds, but we can
only live in our own. Lord Asriel’s great enterprise will fail in
the end for the same reason: we have to build the Republic of Heaven where we are,
because for us there is no elsewhere.

Ch. 26 : The Abyss

The first ghosts trembled with hope, and their excitement
passed back like a ripple over the long line behind them, young
children and aged parents alike looking up and ahead with delight
and wonder as the first stars they had seen for centuries shone
through into their poor starved eyes.

Ch. 26 : The Abyss

One of the ghosts — an old woman — beckoned, urging her to come
close.
Then she spoke, and Mary heard her say:
"Tell them stories. They need the truth. You must tell them
true stories, and everything will be well, just tell them
stories."
That was all, and then she was gone. It was one of those moments
when we suddenly recall a dream that we’ve unaccountably forgotten,
and back in a flood comes all the emotion we felt in our sleep. It
was the dream she’d tried to describe to Atal, the night picture;
but as Mary tried to find it again, it dissolved and drifted apart,
just as these presences did in the open air. The dream was
gone.All that was left was the sweetness of that feeling, and
the injunction to tell them stories.

Ch. 32 : Morning

We have to be all those difficult things like cheerful and kind and
curious and patient, and we’ve got to study and think and work
hard, all of us, in all our different worlds, and then we’ll
build…

They lay back, well fed and comfortable in the flower-scented
night, and listened to Mary tell her story.
She began just before she first met Lyra, telling them about the
work she was doing at the Dark Matter Research group, and the
funding crisis. How much time she’d had to spend asking for money,
and how little time there’d been left for research!
But Lyra’s coming had changed everything, and so quickly: within a
matter of days she’d left her world altogether.
"I did as you told me," she said. "I made a program — that’s a set
of instructions — to let the Shadows talk to me through the
computer. They told me what to do. They said they were angels, and
— well…"
"If you were a scientist," said Will, "I don’t suppose that
was a good thing for them to say. You might not have believed in
angels."
"Ah, but I knew about them. I used to be a nun,
you see. I thought physics could be done to the glory of God, till
I saw there wasn’t any God at all and that physics was more
interesting anyway. The Christian religion is a very powerful and
convincing mistake, that’s all."

Will and Mary in Ch. 33 : Marzipan

"And then what? ... build what?"
"The Republic of Heaven.

"When you stopped believing in God, did you stop believing in
good and evil?"
"No. But I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power
of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that
good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are.
All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps
someone, or that's an evil one, because it hurts them. People are
too complicated to have simple labels."

Will and Mary in Ch. 33 : Marzipan

"I remember. He meant the Kingdom was over, the Kingdom
of Heaven, it was all finished. We shouldn’t live as if it mattered
more than this life in this world, because where we are is always
the most important place."
"He said we had to build something…"
"That’s why we needed our full life, Pan... we wouldn’t have been
able to build it. No one could if they put themselves
first. We have to be all those difficult things like cheerful and
kind and curious and patient, and we’ve got to study and think and
work hard, all of us, in all our different worlds, and then we’ll
build…"

Lyra to Pan in Ch. 38 : The Botanic Garden

"And then what?" said her Dæmon sleepily "build
what?"
"The Republic of Heaven."

Lyra and Pan in Ch. 38 : The Botanic Garden

Surefish interview
(2002)

Those people who claim that they do know that there is a God have
found this claim of theirs the most wonderful excuse for behaving
extremely badly. So belief in a God does not seem to me to result
automatically in behaving very well.

This is not a Kingdom but a Republic, in which we are all free and
equal citizens, with — and this is the important thing —
responsibilities. With the responsibility to make this place into a
Republic of Heaven for everyone.

I'm caught between the words 'atheistic' and
'agnostic'. I've got no evidence whatever for believing in
a God. But I know that all the things I do know are very small
compared with the things that I don't know. So maybe there is a God
out there. All I know is that if there is, he hasn't shown himself
on earth.
But going further than that, I would say that those people
who claim that they do know that there is a God have found this
claim of theirs the most wonderful excuse for behaving extremely
badly. So belief in a God does not seem to me to result
automatically in behaving very well.

When you look at organised religion of whatever sort — whether
it's Christianity in all its variants, or whether it's Islam or
some forms of extreme Hinduism — wherever you see organised
religion and priesthoods and power, you see cruelty and tyranny and
repression. It's almost a universal law.

'Magisterium' and 'oblation' are church terms, they are terms
of church organisation. These are administrative things. These are
bureaucratic things. How can an attack on those be construed as an
attack on God? These are human things which human beings have
constructed in order to wield power. That's not a contentious thing
to say. That is simply true. These are forms of political
organisation and no more than that.

Now here are these children who have gone through great
adventures and learned wonderful things and would therefore be in a
position to do great things to help other people. But they're taken
away. He doesn't let them. For the sake of taking them off to a
perpetual school holiday or something, he kills them all in a train
crash. I think that's ghastly. It's a horrible message.

A sense of belonging, a sense of being part of a real
and important story, a sense of being connected to other people, to
people who are not here any more, to those who have gone before us.
And a sense of being connected to the universe itself.
All those things were promised and summed up in the phrase, 'The Kingdom of Heaven'. But if the
Kingdom is dead, we still need those things. We can't live
without those things because it's too bleak, it's too bare and we
don't need to. We can find a way of creating them for
ourselves if we think in terms of a Republic of Heaven.This is not a Kingdom but a Republic, in which we are all
free and equal citizens, with — and this is the important thing —
responsibilities. With the responsibility to make this
place into a Republic of Heaven for everyone. Not to live in it in
a state of perpetual self-indulgence, but to work hard to make this
place as good as we possibly can.

This book contains a story and several other
things. The other things might be connected with the
story, or they might not; they might be connected to stories that
haven't appeared yet. It's not easy to tell.

All these tattered old bits and pieces have a history
and a meaning. A group of them together can seem like the
traces left by an ionizing particle in a bubble chamber: they draw
the line of a path taken by something too mysterious to see. That
path is a story, of course. What scientists do when they look at
the line of bubbles on the screen is work out the story of the
particle that made them: what sort of particle it must have been,
and what caused it to move in that way, and how long it was likely
to continue.
Dr. Mary Malone would have been familiar with that sort of story in
the course of her search for dark matter. But it might not have
occurred to her, for example, when she sent a postcard to an old
friend shortly after arriving in Oxford for the first time, that
that card itself would trace part of a story that hadn't yet
happened when she wrote it. Perhaps some particles move
backward in time; perhaps the future affects the past in some way
we don't understand; or perhaps the universe is simply more aware
than we are. There are many things we haven't yet learned how to
read.
The story in this book is partly about that very process.

Everything has a meaning, if only we could read
it.

Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think
(2006)

Chapter: Every Indication of Inadvertant
Solitude I think it's fair to guess that most of Richard
Dawkins' many readers are not using The Self Geneand its
successors as textbooks to help them pass science exams. That he is
a highly distinguished scientist is not in question, but many
scientists have achieved great distinction &ldash; and indeed
written textbooks &ldash; without once writing a popular
best-seller.

The Golden Compass is an exciting fantasy adventure, set in an alternative world where people's souls manifest themselves as animals ("daemons"), talking bears fight wars, and Gyptians and witches co-exist.

At the center of the story is Lyra, a 12-year-old girl who starts out trying to rescue a friend who's been kidnapped by a mysterious organization known as the Gobblers - and winds up on an epic quest to save not only her world, but ours as well. Players can assume the role of Lyra, or the character of Iorek Byrnison, a great armoured polar bear who joins the quest.

As Lyra, players will use their daemon and collaborate with in-game characters, collecting special items in order to explore, evade, and deceive their way through confrontations with the Gobblers, the Magisterium, and the horribly dangerous spy fly to find her friend. They can also do battle as Iorek with special attacks and a riding mechanic as he protects Lyra during the journey. Gamers will be able to unlock secrets and mini-games using a mysterious, truth-telling golden compass device called an alethiometer. Players can explore 13 vast locations, including all-new breath-taking environments not seen in the film, on this massive journey of collaboration, exploration and the eternal struggle between good and evil.

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